


Eat Rotten Fruit From a Shitty Tree

by birdbrains



Series: Old ERF [4]
Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Abuse, Bucky thinks Steve is his handler, Consent Issues, Gallows Humor, HYDRA Trash Party, M/M, Past Sexual Assault, Snark, Trauma, Triggers, UST, deep conditioned triggers, puns
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-22
Updated: 2015-02-01
Packaged: 2018-03-02 20:12:19
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,749
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2824706
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/birdbrains/pseuds/birdbrains
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After being accidentally paralyzed with a deep conditioning trigger, Bucky tells Steve about some things that happened when he was paralyzed before. He tries to make it as funny as possible.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Content notes for..."thematic elements?" Basically a survivor having a flippant and humorous attitude about rape, abuse, and consent issues cause by trauma. But you're already here.

"So you got any favorite TV shows? Movies?" Bucky whipped his head around and looked at Steve like he was crazy. "I know it seems like a strange question, but I was trying to think of something I could put on if you get paralyzed again. I don't want you to be bored. I could put you on the couch or something. Have you tried Snuggies?"

"Yes," Bucky said; then he looked away and said in a rush, "I think you better leave me on the floor next time. Don't move me at all or put anything on me, even a blanket."

"Why? Something interesting on the ceiling?"

"I remembered you being funnier."

"Can't help but think it would be pretty uncomfortable down there."

"W-e-ell," Bucky said. He was chewing on what he was going to say, and not looking at Steve. Finally he said, half-smiling and a little apologetic, "Certain Hydra assholes used to move me around and dress me up and stuff when I couldn't move. Sometimes costumes, as a joke, sometimes, other stuff, but...not so good either way. I really...I'd sure appreciate it if you don't move me or touch me when I'm like that."

"Of course, Bucky," Steve said.

"I mean, in the event of a flash flood or lightning is striking the house, I'll put up with you moving me--because I want to spare you the pain of losing me. But otherwise it would be real nice to be left to my own devices--predictable as they are with me being paralyzed."

"Got it," Steve said. "So...what kind of costumes?"

Bucky looked at him consideringly. "It really doesn't bother you?"

"What was it you said? 'It's over, no point bitching about it now,'" Steve said, but he wasn't sure he could always live up to it.

Bucky smiled. "That's smart, right? Real quotable. But the thing is, as much as I know--well, sometimes I can't decide how to *be* about it. It's just going to fuck me up to talk and think about it all the time, but sometimes, it's all I want to talk about. Which is stupid, right?"

"I actually don't think modern research shows that talking about it fucks you up. You're even...supposed to do it."

"Do you talk about stuff, Steve?"

Steve wracked his brain. "Sometimes? It's definitely happened at some point."

Bucky cuddled up to him on the couch. "This okay? You believe I'm cuddling up under my own free will and shit?"

"Yes," Steve said irritated.

"Okay. So costumes, yeah. The thing is all of this wasn't allowed. They were just supposed to put me away or if they felt like making themselves useful maybe put a feeding tube in me and wash me. I mean, I'm sort of fucking testy when I'm moving so they usually had to just hose me, which isn't all that thorough--they should've been washing behind my ears and shit, but instead they were like, 'Wow, let's put lipstick on him!'"

Bucky mugged at Steve as if he was expecting him to laugh; Steve couldn't but he managed a weak smile. "Bet you looked great."

"Oh me fucking too, if I just had the muscle control to look at myself in the mirror," Bucky said. "Now, that stuff sucks, but I'd actually start to come back a little bit during it. 'Cause you don't put lipstick on a gun or whatever--that's why they weren't supposed to do it, 'cause treating me like a person, even as a joke, tended to mess with the programming. Same for sex, but as with the lipstick I'm just way too fucking tempting so--oh come on, Steve, you said it was okay, don't look so--"

"Well you didn't tell me about the sex though," Steve said. "You straight up said there wasn't, remember?"

"Uh, if *you'll* remember, that was when you were still willing to fuck me, Steve," Bucky said. "I already tried to kill you so I didn't want to add to the ever-growing list of reasons you'd probably never be able to get it up for me again?"

Steve looked at him. "That is dumb as shit, you know," he said.

"Be honest, your dick shrivels up like a slug when you think about that stuff."

"It does not!" Steve said. "But it would be a huge, manly slug." Bucky kissed him on the cheek, which was embarrassingly thrilling. "Sorry, I can't hear you over the sound of my dick breaking into a million pieces and dying," Steve said.

"Hey, that was under my own steam, not Hydra. Anyway--well, you can't blame me for wanting to make you think of me as more normal. I'm not, even a little bit, but it'd be easier on you. And on me too probably if I don't have to worry about breaking your dick."

"You couldn't ever break it," Steve said. "Have you ever looked in a mirror?" It was almost as emotional as he ever got. "Is it okay if I--"

"Yes it's okay."

What was the point of asking anyway. What Steve wanted was just to pull Bucky even closer, nothing sexual--well he was lying if he said being close to Bucky could not be sexual, but he just wanted Bucky's head on his shoulder. Just as he was thinking about it, Bucky did it. "Thanks, that's what I wanted."

"Yeah, I'm good at that. Oh fuck, I didn't mean to tell you that." Bucky sat up away from him. "I'm so sorry, Steve."

"Are you serious? You don't have to be sorry for--" Steve couldn't even finish the sentence, he hated Bucky's expression so much. He looked like a kicked dog. "You're not in trouble."

"I fucking *know* that, do you think telling me it helps?" Bucky spat out. "Sorry. Fuck--I'm sorry--"

Steve had no idea what to do. He didn't think it was a good idea to try to comfort Bucky by touching him. Instead he just kept talking. "I know you know, but I'm just gonna say it, okay? You didn't...well, first of all, you didn't upset me, but if you did, that's not a problem. You won't lose me and I'm not going to do anything to you for upsetting me. No one is."

"I *know* that," Bucky said. "I just...it's so fucking hard, Steve."

He got up and went behind the couch, presumably so Steve couldn't see him. Okay.

"You are my best friend and I'm so scared of you and it's hard to tell the difference sometimes. Okay? It's okay to tell you?"

"Yes, completely okay."

"Because I know I really cared about you. And I worried about you. I remember that."

"Yeah, I gave you a lot of stuff to worry about."

"*So*," Bucky said, "sometimes I feel like I'm...precognitive or something. No, they didn't do anything like that for real. Is that even possible? It's just, I got a way of stepping around the person who's in charge, and if I know what he wants before he wants it, then that tends to work out pretty well for me. The point is, I can read you pretty well, I mean better than I ought to be able to."

"Yeah, I got that," Steve said. "It's really not a problem."

"Well it is a problem, and I'll tell you why," Bucky said walking back around the couch and proceeding to pace back and forth while he delivered his opinions to Steve. It was a familiar mannerism, and he looked better than he had before--confident, not cringing. Steve wasn't sure if he should be happy or if Bucky had just taken a minute to paste some old expressions on top of what he was actually feeling. No use worrying about it, though. "Problem is on the one hand I've always wanted things to be good for you, I know that and it's not new. On the other hand, now I feel like it *has* to be good, and that's different, and that's the part that makes me know what you want sometimes."

"How do you know?"

Bucky shrugged. "It's not magic. Just--it's not too different from what the work was. You have to be observant and put details together real fast? It comes together for me without me wanting it to, and then...well what's so wrong with me cuddling up on you if you want me to?"

"What's wrong with it?" Steve said. He could guess, but he didn't know exactly what Bucky's answer would be,

"Because the way I know it is fucked up and weird. Comes out of me thinking you're going to do something real bad to me if I get it wrong. But I can't help knowing and I want you to be happy, so what am I to do?"

"You should do whatever you want," Steve said, and Bucky groaned.

"Advice of the century, pal." He came back over and made to lean in to Steve again. "This okay? Just to warn you this is one hundred percent Hydra. Don't have an original want in my body or thought in my brain. That assassin stuff is a myth, I was programmed for cuddling."

"C'mon," Steve said and Bucky settled into him. "Wow, this is good programming, Bucky. You smell nice too."

"Yeah, Hydra did that," Bucky said.

"Oh and how'd they do that? Scientific deodorant?"

Bucky cackled into his neck. "What the fuck is that? Deodorant they had to test in a lab--"

"They test all deodorant in a lab. No, this is deodorant with super advanced technology in it to make you smell good."

"I don't sweat when I'm paralyzed, maybe that's why."

"That sounds dangerous."

"Yeah, it is, I got real dehydrated a few times when they were keeping me somewhere hot."

"Hm," Steve said.

"De-Hydra-ated? Is that where you're going with that?"

"You said it, I didn't," Steve said.


	2. Discretion

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this probably has the most potentially upsetting content, so I will just summarize in the endnotes

They sat like that for a while; at some point after Bucky sarcastic-laughed at Steve’s Hydra pun, he had hugged him and Steve just wanted to stay that way forever, with his face pressed into Bucky’s neck and shoulder, on the soft side. But he knew that pretty soon he would start getting too turned on to keep things at a comfortable level.

It was a little frustrating, actually. He wished he could enjoy the closeness more purely. People acted like virginity meant one thing when it actually meant the opposite; a unicorn wouldn’t get within a mile of Steve, he was so filthy-minded. Sometimes he couldn’t even handle Bucky eating a piece of toast, one of the least suggestive foods imaginable. It wasn’t like he was thinking about Bucky doing anything with his mouth. He just wanted to think about Bucky’s mouth, as a concept. It made him feel sleazy and different from other people.

The point is, he didn’t let the hug last very long, but he ended up sort of cheating, leading sideways with his head on Bucky’s shoulder--so he got the closeness but it wasn’t as overwhelming, he couldn’t smell Bucky’s hair as well, and if anything did happen they weren’t sitting in a position where Bucky would be able to feel it. Steve was busy trying not to feel so embarrassed for himself when Bucky said, “So when are you gonna stop pretending it doesn’t bother you?”

“What?” Steve said. He wasn’t even sure which of the many bothersome issues Bucky was talking about.

“You know,” Bucky said. He moved away so he could look Steve in the face, and when Steve looked blankly at him he rolled his eyes and said, “The dick shriveling, Steve. When are you gonna stop pretending the dick shriveling isn’t happening?”

Steve didn’t mean to, but he burst out laughing. It was too ridiculous after what he’d just been thinking about. Bucky flinched and stared at him. “Sorry, Buck,” Steve said--“that’s just really, really not even _slightly_ happening, you know?”

“That’s not possible,” Bucky said.

“Have you ever looked in a mirror?” Steve said. “Have you ever even heard yourself talk? I mean, that’s not even the point. You think someone’s going to stop being interested in you because of a bunch of things a bunch of evil people did to you?”

“I did a whole lot, myself,” Bucky said.

“Well, not while you were paralyzed, so we’re talking about something else. I know you killed people--that didn’t exactly slip my mind.”

“Mine neither,” Bucky said. “And?”

“And what?” 

“Are you gonna say it wasn’t the real me or something?”

“Was it the real you?”

“Yes.”

“Well, then, I’m not gonna say that,” Steve said.

“You know I really liked it,” Bucky said. “I really enjoyed killing people.”

“Well that’s obvious,” Steve said, “it’s not like they had to torture you for years and fry your brain to get you to do it.”

“Oh, someone’s clever,” Bucky sniffed.

“What did you like about it?” Steve asked.

“Well, I didn’t exactly like it,” Bucky said.

“Yeah, I know,” Steve said. “You’ve told me about a million times you weren’t allowed to like anything. You weren’t allowed to like food, I’m supposed to believe you were allowed to like killing people? What if you liked killing the wrong people?”

“I didn’t hate it,” Bucky said. “I wasn’t crying about it or something.”

“I never got the impression you were crying much about anything,” Steve said. “What use would you be to them if you were?”

“Well, I _kind_ of liked it,” Bucky said. “It was like playing a game. It was satisfying to be able to win it. People didn’t feel like people to me. They were like giant dolls. You just had to figure out how to get to them. What do you think of that?”

“I don’t know what you want me to say,” Steve said.

“So you think it’s bad, then,” Bucky said satisfied.

Steve almost yelled at him but it wasn’t the best idea. “I don’t think anything about it, Buck. They had to do a lot of strange things to make you into the Winter Soldier.”

“No, it’s what _I_ felt,” Bucky said. “They didn’t do that to me.”

“I didn’t say that, Buck.”

Steve chose his words carefully and tried to seem relaxed, which was hard with the way Bucky was looking. He was sitting close to Steve, too close, with a half-grin, half-grimace on his face, and staring at him. Steve felt like he was about to be pounced on and eaten by a giant cat as soon as he said the wrong thing.

“It’s not exactly a normal situation,” he said. “I don’t think anything you felt about it is going to surprise me that much or seem that bad. If you had really liked killing people, it would have been because they wanted you to like it. Killing those people still wasn’t something you decided to do.”

Maybe it was the right answer, because Bucky briefly looked at a loss. But then he grinned hugely; he looked even more like a cat. The grin showed all his teeth. He looked like he was struggling to speak for a minute, and then he said, still smiling furiously, “I wanted the sex stuff they did to me. I begged for it.”

“Oh, so it happened when you weren’t paralyzed, too?” Steve said.

“No, it didn’t. I wouldn’t _lie_ to you, Steve.” It was hard not to laugh at that. “It wasn’t a big thing. Just a few times less than ten, maybe less than five?--maybe it was only one technician who ever did it. I don’t really remember a face. No, I couldn’t talk. I wouldn’t have talked anyway. I just begged for it in my head.” He’d stopped looking at Steve, thank God, and was looking at the bookcase. “They--or he--couldn’t actually, you know, fuck me. With the paralysis my muscles wouldn’t relax. I think he hurt himself more than me the one time he tried.” He glanced at Steve. “You probably don’t know what a Fleshlight is.”

“Oh, come on,” Steve said. This was a great example of the virgin thing. “I have about ten.”

“You don’t have ten Fleshlights,” Bucky said.

“Sure, for my ten dicks. Okay, fine, I have one. But I have one.”

Bucky snorted. His gleeful angry smile had mostly faded, and he was talking more gently. It was like he needed a sharp edge to get into the story. “Okay. Well, you know how that works, except--with my head?” He looked at Steve, not aggressively, just to see if he was following. “I guess--I never gave a blowjob when I was alive. But typically the person would be able to hold his head in the right position, or move, right? Obviously I wasn’t able to do that, so he--or they--you know, it must have been two people. One of them would hold my face, like this.” He put his hands on his face, palms on his cheeks and fingers holding onto his jaw--right hand on the left side and left on the right, like someone facing him would be doing it. “The other one would hold on to the back of my head--his fingers in my hair?”

Steve was glad Bucky wasn’t doing the staring thing right then, because he felt strangely stunned and blank. He didn’t know what he would say to this.

Bucky was looking at the bookcase. “Obviously, they were holding on to me like that so they could use my mouth easier. Nothing friendly about it, but, you know. I still liked having their hands there. Got to take what you can get, right?” He shrugged. “Anyway, that’s about it. That’s the sex story. Not much to it.”

“Oh, okay,” Steve said.

A silence unspooled between them. Steve was half waiting for some kind of attack, but he realized it wasn’t coming. Either Bucky had lost the train of it while he was talking, or he was just never going for that in the first place. Probably the first one. But still. 

“Um--can I hold onto you for a minute?” Steve asked.

“Obviously,” Bucky said, but he didn’t move, just sat there next to Steve, looking at him. He was staring, but it wasn’t the usual kind--his eyes were clear and pale, he was waiting. They looked at each other and he tilted his head to one side.

“Actually, I’d rather kiss you,” Steve said. “I mean--if you want to. Is that--”

Bucky rolled his eyes and pulled himself over onto Steve and kissed him. Steve felt like he was drowning. Bucky’s mouth was warm, his fingers were strong and cold where they were resting not too hard against the back of Steve’s neck, and Steve had never been this close to anyone ever. He wished he was smaller again so he could squeeze in even closer, but it was pretty good the way it was; it felt like something was dissipating inside him, something that had always been wound up. He pressed as close as he could. 

“That’s good,” Bucky said into his mouth and the words felt sort of weird and delicate because he could feel them as well as hear them. Steve put his left hand on the side of Bucky’s face, and almost dropped it when Bucky shivered, but Bucky said, “No. That’s good. I just told you I like it. It’s really good,” and kissed him some more.

Pretty soon Steve had to pull back and say, “I’m sorry, I’m gonna--it’s gonna get embarrassing, if we don’t--” and Bucky was _beaming_ at him. “Stop it,” Steve grumbled.

“But I _like_ it,” Bucky said, reaching up to fix some part of Steve’s hair that probably didn’t need fixing. His fingers stayed there cool against the scalp. “You really like it, don’t you?”

“I don’t see why you have to interrogate me about it,” Steve said.

“Because I like how you like it,” Bucky said. His fingers stroked down and then came to rest again on the back of Steve’s neck, where they’d been before, and he said, “You’re perfect, Steve, you know that?” Steve made a gagging noise. “Sorry, I meant to say you’re terrible. I have to go rinse my mouth out with soap.” 

“So, you liked it too?” Steve said, and Bucky grinned at him and kissed him quickly.

“I’ll lay off you now. Don’t want you to be, uh, ‘embarrassed.’”

“Jerk,” Steve said.

“No, don’t. I’m being nice to you.”

They were supposed to stop, but for a few minutes it felt like neither of them really wanted to go away from what they’d been doing. They just sat and eyeballed each other on the couch, and sometimes Bucky would break into a grin again--an asshole grin, but genuinely pleased, not one of those other kinds of smiles.

“I really liked that,” he said finally.

“Yeah, I know.”

“Don’t be an asshole, pretend I was mysterious about it!”

“You weren’t mysterious. You’re sitting there leering at me like I’m that one painting in church you had a thing for. We’ve also been sitting here hashing things out for hours and I’m hungry.”

“I can go and get you something,” Bucky said.

“I can go and get it myself, I’m not an infant.”

“News to me,” Bucky said. “Anyway I don’t really want another adventure today if I can help it, so I’m just gonna make a sandwich, and I’m trying to tell you that if you ask nicely, you too can have your very own sandwich.”

“I want my very own sandwich,” Steve said, “but don’t get it confused with yours, because I want everything we have in it, not just the stuff you can eat.”

“Insensitive,” Bucky said.

“You offered.”

“I guess you could come help me out with the sandwiches.”

“I’m just gonna stay here,” Steve said. He was actually coming up with a plan to run off to the bathroom and jerk off as soon as Bucky left the room, so Bucky didn’t realize how pathetic he was.

“Lazy,” Bucky said. He got up and then leaned down to kiss Steve on his temple; then he leaned over him like he had more to say, but he gave up; and Steve was hard pressed to figure out what it would have been.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Bucky claims (unconvincingly) that he enjoyed killing people. Then he says that he enjoyed being sexually abused, and gives a somewhat graphic description of it, with the upshot being that what he liked about it was having his face touched. Right after this he and Steve make out. (Okay I guess that part isn't "upsetting" but I could see how some people might think it's sketchy.)


End file.
